Windows 7 extremely slow when booting up, freezes

Hello, I've been procrastinating on fixing this for about a month now but I recently got the spine in order to do this.

My laptop is a Windows 7, HP Pavilion dm4. I've been using it for around two years now, and at the beginning of December I turned it on and (I believe) it started to update. It took forever to update, and I think I rebooted it - to which it started the update process again. I *think* it finished updating, but after that the laptop started to become extremely slow, and I can't even use it. I've tried almost every solution on the web and couldn't fix it, so I'd appreciate you guys' wisdom.

Let me describe it the best I can - as of now, when I reboot it (accomplished by holding the power button down for a couple of seconds, waiting, then pressing it to start up again) it loads to the Windows Error Recovery screen, with four choices - Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Networking, Safe Mode with Command Prompt, and Start Windows Normally.

I've tried booting it in Safe Mode (which usually works well - takes around 7 minutes to get me to the desktop) but the desktop is all black, and I have no idea what to do in there - tried running Command Prompt in Administrator mode and sfc /scannow *but* it stalls around at 51%, and then says "Windows Resource Protection could not perform the requested operation", which is pretty frustrating.

Safe Mode with Networking and Command Prompt get me nowhere - tried doing the Command Prompt without elevating it to administrator mode and the same problem occurred.

A while ago, Start Windows Normally, after a couple of minutes (10-15) *usually* got me to the desktop, where it then became totally unresponsive and froze, but now (after trying a System Restore a couple days back), after getting me to the start screen (where you enter your password), it goes all black (though my cursor's still there), and I can't get out of it besides rebooting it. I think I've waited a maximum of 20 minutes before rebooting it.

I've tried System Restore, rebooting in Safe Mode and sfc /scannowing, and all to no avail. Was this caused by a virus (I run MSE) or a bad Windows Update? Help?

It's advised to run this up to three times if it continually reports that it is unable to fix.

If you are now able to get in, open a command prompt as an administrator and run chkdsk in read-only mode by entering chkdsk which will display its report in the cmd window, noting any bad files/sectors.

The SP1 ISO is ~3.09GB so there may not be enough free space on the USB, but for the ISO to be bootable, you can't just copy it onto a disk or USB which is why you need the Windows USB/DVD burner to create the bootable media.

The SP1 ISO is ~3.09GB so there may not be enough free space on the USB, but for the ISO to be bootable, you can't just copy it onto a disk or USB which is why you need the Windows USB/DVD burner to create the bootable media.

Which instructions are you unclear about ?

Yeah, I downloaded the SPI ISO and the Windows 7-USB-DVD-tool, but I don't know what to do with them. I have them sitting on my Mac desktop, and I can't copy them over to a USB drive.

How do I use the Windows-7-USB-DVD-tool? At the moment I have the Windows 7 laptop that's having problems, a Mac, and a 16G USB drive.

The Windows burner will need to be run on a Windows machine, but instead of drag & drop, do you have the Send to option on a Mac as you do on a Windows based machine where you right click on the file to copy an existing file onto the USB or DVD.

When you run the Windows burner, click on Browse then on the ISO and then Open and then you'll have the option of selecting USB or DVD but if you are going to use an USB as the bootable media, then there can't be anything else on it so a 4GB stick would be more suitable.

Are you still able to boot into Safe Mode on the Windows machine to create this media or would you be able to use a friend's or relative's Windows machine to download the ISO and burner afresh and create it on that.

I have any downloads default to my Downloads folder which makes life a lot easier.

If you right click on the ISO file you can use Send to, to put it into the Docs folder which should make it easier to access or, go Start, click on the computer's username and you should see a row of folders of which one should be Desktop.

You can delete the file that you already have as there's no point in unnecessarily wasting HDD space with an unusable 3.09GB file.

Edit

Just looking at your attachment, but did you double click on the highlighted Libraries (System folder) to see if it was listed in there as it will have been put into a folder rather than sitting out in the open and you would have to open the Docs folder after you had used Send to.